Turning Teachers Into Indentured Servants

Hundreds of guest workers are lured to the United States under false pretenses. They are ruthlessly exploited by the labor contractors who bring them here. Their U.S. employer turns a blind eye to this exploitation. And the contractor bullies the workers into paying fees and taking out loans that keep them in virtual slavery.

Does this sound like a big-city sweatshop? Maybe a farm preying on low-wage labor?

Actually, the workers in this case are teachers—350 Filipino guest workers brought to this country to teach in Louisiana public schools. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and Covington & Burling LLP have filed a lawsuit on their behalf [2]. The defendants include the two labor contracting companies and several Louisiana school officials who helped keep the teachers in servitude. 

The lawsuit accuses the defendants of human trafficking, racketeering and fraud—all to fill teaching jobs. The use of what the government calls “H-1B” guest workers [3] to recruit teachers has grown sharply in the last decade. The number of overseas-trained teachers hired in the United States now stands at more than 19,000. In 2009, Texas had the most of these guest workers, with 4,424, followed by New York, California, Maryland and Louisiana.

How did the Filipino teachers get lured into indentured servitude? They were first asked to pay a hefty fee for the privilege of working in the United States—a privilege they thought would bring them good-paying jobs. Once the fee was paid, they were dinged into paying more fees and taking out loans that kept them beholden to the labor contractors. If they refused, they’d be sent home and lose all the money they had already invested.

“We were herded into a path, a slowly constricting path, where the moment you feel the suspicion that something is not right, you’re already way past the point of no return,” said Ingrid Cruz, one of the Filipino teachers.

In other words, they were conned. And the con continues because currently there are very few standards that govern the way teachers are recruited from abroad [4]. The problem goes beyond criminal exploitation. Many of these teachers were recruited to fill positions at hard-to-staff  U.S. schools. Once they arrived they were often thrown into situations where they faced stressful language and cultural barriers. Many teachers were put in these untenable situations with no training or mentoring.

The abuses in Louisiana raise all kinds of troubling issues. If even highly educated people can be exploited this readily under our guest worker laws, imagine what is happening to those who are not as educated and not as willing to fight back? And if school districts are so eager to offload their responsibilities as employers, what does that say about how they handle their responsibilities toward students? 

Bringing qualified immigrant teachers to the United States can be very helpful. These teachers often possess language or professional skills that are in short supply. And foreign teachers can expose U.S. students to a rich variety of cultural views. But the current system for bringing these teachers into the country corrupts school administrators and frustrates the education process. And as SPLC Legal Director Mary Bauer put it, it is a rip-off waiting to happen. “It’s clear,” she says, “that the very structure of the program lends itself to pervasive worker abuse.”